Abstract
Sustainability of agricultural practices is one of the most important issues in organic agriculture and its assessment is crucial. To this aim, evaluating the balance between the energy inputs and outputs in crop rotations could be a valuable tool. Therefore, we compared different management strategies in a four-year organic cropping system, by estimating the energy balance of crop production. Two different living mulches with no-till (B1) and green manure (B2) were compared with a cropping system without cover crop (B3), performing both energy analysis and energy balance. Energy parameters were also evaluated. The energy input of fertilizers and water was more than 55% of the total energy required by the cropping systems, suggesting that these agronomic practices should be tailored by farmers to decrease total energy inputs. The potential energy output was significantly higher in the B1 than the B2 and B3 cropping systems (20% and 54%, respectively). Results indicated that B1 and B2 could enhance the energy outputs without negatively affecting the energy consumption, since these cropping systems also showed higher energy efficiency. The introduction of the cover crop as living mulch combined with no-till could be a powerful tool to enhance systems sustainability, without compromising the crop yields.
Highlights
The European commission [1] has defined the organic agriculture as a production system, based on an agro-ecosystem management approach, which sustains the health of soils, ecosystems, ecological production methods, biodiversity and cropping systems adapted to local conditions
In 2015–2016 season, the highest value of cauliflower marketable yield was found in the B2 and B1 systems, whereas the B3 treatment showed a reduction of 42% and 39% compared with B2 and B1, respectively
The results indicated that the systems with the introduction of legume agro-ecological service crops (ASC) in the crop rotations may reduce the needs of fertilizers and, the energy related to the fertilization practices [11]
Summary
The European commission [1] has defined the organic agriculture as a production system, based on an agro-ecosystem management approach, which sustains the health of soils, ecosystems, ecological production methods, biodiversity and cropping systems adapted to local conditions. The organic agriculture approach promotes lowest soil disturbance, permanent/semi-permanent soil cover and the joint use of crop rotations, organic fertilizers and soil amendments to increase or preserve soil organic matter content. The potential of ASC as LM to provide ecological services could be showed as an increase of biodiversity, containing or suppressing weeds [5], adding soil organic matter to soil and improving soil physicochemical characteristics [6], reducing losses of nutrients, containing water run-off effects [7]
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